Life of Python

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The BBC would like to announce

that the next scene is unsuitable

for family viewing.

It contains scenes of violence

involving people's heads and

arms getting chopped off.

There are also naked women

with floppy breasts.

Also, you can see a pair of buttocks,

and there's another bit

where I swear you can see everything.

Maybe it's just the way

he's holding the spear.

A lot of American humour from

the fifties in television

was based on sort of,

kind of real social situations

and real relationships,

And Python takes that basis

and just explodes it.

Yieee!

They were cruel, but

I found it hilarious.

I'm a bit of a cruel twit myself.

He also nailed your wife's

head to a coffee table.

Isn't that right, mrs. O'Tracey?

Oh, no.

No, no.

Yeah, well, he did do that, yeah.

He was a cruel man, but fair.

For us, they defined English comedy.

Since then, I've learned

there's another kind--

A sort of music-hall comedy,

but for us, they were always--

They were English comedy.

What's going on here, then?

Ah, "You have beautiful thighs."

What?

He hit me.

"Drop your panties, sir William.

I cannot wait till lunchtime."

Right!

My nipples explode with delight.

Monty who?

Monty Python?

Oh.

Monty Python?

Oh, you mean the rock group.

And now...

Oh, my god.

Your roses or your life.

Hey.

Your costumes didn't do you any good.

Oh, my god, there's some documentary--

This is a fly on the wall.

That's club sh*t.

This is a fly on the wall.

"Fly on the wall" camera.

They're doing a documentary.

They don't want us to

notice they're here.

Just be perfectly natural.

Be absolutely natural.

Um... How are you?

I live in Germany. That's right.

I do comedy in Germany for a living.

Stop it!

Does anybody know the way?

Yes, I believe you.

Hello.

George Harrison has always--

His theory is that we took over

the spirit of the beatles,

'cause we started

just as they finished.

Whatever that spirit was,

we were the ones that carried it on.

There's a lovely anecdote

told to us about a man

who'd been in the northeast.

In early Python days, we weren't

necessarily networked,

and he sat down,

and the Python show he was watching

started with this man

walking along one of the

Roman walls up in Cumbria

and going on about it.

He was a particularly silly man

with a particularly silly voice,

and this guy laughed

and laughed and laughed.

Then he began to think the sketch

was going on rather a long time.

Eventually he realized

it wasn't Python at all.

It was a local program.

It seems to me that it was a...

It was basically getting out hatreds

and dislikes of a certain

bourgeois structure of life

with which one had grown up--

The repressive English upbringing

where you weren't

really supposed to laugh

and make fun of things.

It wasn't satirizing individuals

in government or in politics.

Um, if there is any satire in Python,

it's in a more sort

of general sense,

you know, a sort of

generalized human level

rather than specifics.

Last week on party hints,

I showed you how to make

a small plate of goulash

go around 26 people,

how to get the best

out of your canapes,

and how to unblock your loo.

This week-- what to do if there's

an armed communist uprising

near your home when

you're having a party.

All the Pythons came from very

comfortable middle-class existences,

and so the rebellion, such as it was,

was not a curse against madly off-key

and probably into becoming

sort of, uh...

kitchen-sink dramatists

with a very short life.

Um, and sort of our, if you like,

our sort of reaction

was against a sort of

rather stifling world.

It wasn't necessarily oppressive.

It didn't hurt us.

It wasn't unpleasant or unkind.

It just was very, very conventional.

We know our place,

but what do we get out of it?

I get a feeling of

superiority over them.

I get a feeling of

inferiority from him,

but a feeling of

superiority over him.

I get a pain in the back of my neck.

We were all writers

for The Frost Report,

so we'd met over a long period of time

and had worked on the

same sort of shows.

The Frost Reports were very

good shows, very well written.

They had a theme.

Like the first show,

the theme was authority.

A comedy show about authority?

It had three more syllables

than most comedy notions.

So it wasn't a sort of

"Hello, darling. I'm home."

In a courtroom, of course,

authority is in its element.

My lord, in this case,

my learned friend

appears for the defense,

and I appear for the money.

The first television was

writing sketches with Graham.

We used to write one,

or sometimes two,

three-minute sketches each week.

I sometimes performed them,

but not always,

And Mike and Terry used to

write the filmed piece.

And Eric used to often write,

a rather sort of witty-type verbal--

His kind of style stuff,

which Ronnie Barker often did.

We were all meeting then.

We'd write what he called his cdm--

His continuous developing monologue,

which John and Graham

used to call ojaril--

Old jokes and ridiculously

irrelevant links.

So I learned there's a power

in being a writer.

I used to live in Notting Hill Gate,

and my jokes were sent

by the BBC by taxi,

and I had to go by tube.

This taxi would arrive,

and they'd be hot off the press.

It was an interesting stage.

The Frost Report went out live.

I would write in this pub,

The Sun And Splendour,

in Notting Hill Gate.

I'd spend my lunch there

writing some jokes

off the newspapers,

send them in the taxi.

The next day, I'd come in

and hear my jokes

being told at the bar.

Gilliam wasn't alive then.

He was still in America.

He hadn't made the great odyssey

across the atlantic.

Then Eric and Terry were

asked to do a show

called Do Not Adjust Your Set

by Humphrey Barkley,

And I think they asked,

"We'll do it if my

friend Mike can do it."

Mrs. Johnson, I wonder

if your husband's in.

What do you want him for?

Can he come out and play?

He's just had his dinner.

He's got to sit down an hour

while the food goes down.

But we've got to go in soon.

I can't help that. He was late.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

was a way of doing what you wanted

because nobody was

looking at kids' shows.

The executives weren't

watching this stuff.

You could get away with murder.

I was doing that sort

of thing in the states

and getting nowhere.

When I came to England,

this was like finding people

on the same wavelength.

They spoke the language

better than I did,

but as far as the way the mental

processes were working,

it was-- "We're home."

He came to us on

Do Not Adjust Your Set

with some sketches he brought.

Michael and Terry were

very sniffy to him.

Who is this awful American with

his long haircut coming in?

And I liked him.

He wore this sort of Afghan coat.

It was like a woolly old sheep.

It was love at first sight.

I fell in love with his coat.

I love you.

Ugh!

Indians!

Aah!

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